Christian Fellowship Community Group
A safe place for Christians who Love Jesus Christ to meet and ask for prayer and share scriptures from the bible. We value the posting of Christian music, poems, stories and also personal testimonies. Please let us know your needs, concerns and have some fun getting to know each other. We treat each other with respect.
Salvation by Works?
Although we can not earn salvation in any way, we still retain our freedom of choice to keep on obeying the teachings of the Lord ( summed up in" loving each other as He loved us") or to reject them and fall into a lukewarm state and even be endangered of falling away completely. Why else would the apostle Paul exhort: "Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to do according to His good purpose." The work of salvation is completely God's doing, through the sacrifice of His Son and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. However He never will force us or touch the freedom of our will. But He calls us to enter His rest, the promised land, where all our own self-centred efforts to please Him cease. We then only rest in the faith of what He has done for us through Christ.(Hebrew 11.6) However, who still keeps on sinning ( John 3.9)and does not produce "fruits in keeping with repentance" (Matth.3.8) and does not love in word and deed, (John 3.18) has to ask himself, if the faith he has, is not dead - a faith which even demons have and shudder. (a mere intellectual faith) As long we have not entered the rest of God, we will always be tempted to fall either into the one extreme of trying to please God by works of the law or by our own rules, in our own efforts, or the other extreme to rest on some spiritual knowledge or experience - new birth or baptism of the Spirit - and lag behind by not keeping in step with the guidance of the Spirit who wants to lead us to perfection. (Galatians 5.25)" Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."
Although we can not earn salvation in any way, we still retain our freedom of choice to keep on obeying the teachings of the Lord ( summed up in" loving each other as He loved us") or to reject them and fall into a lukewarm state and even be endangered of falling away completely. Why else would the apostle Paul exhort: "Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to do according to His good purpose." The work of salvation is completely God's doing, through the sacrifice of His Son and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. However He never will force us or touch the freedom of our will. But He calls us to enter His rest, the promised land, where all our own self-centred efforts to please Him cease. We then only rest in the faith of what He has done for us through Christ.(Hebrew 11.6) However, who still keeps on sinning ( John 3.9)and does not produce "fruits in keeping with repentance" (Matth.3.8) and does not love in word and deed, (John 3.18) has to ask himself, if the faith he has, is not dead - a faith which even demons have and shudder. (a mere intellectual faith) As long we have not entered the rest of God, we will always be tempted to fall either into the one extreme of trying to please God by works of the law or by our own rules, in our own efforts, or the other extreme to rest on some spiritual knowledge or experience - new birth or baptism of the Spirit - and lag behind by not keeping in step with the guidance of the Spirit who wants to lead us to perfection. (Galatians 5.25)" Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."
I have learned to look at the broader meaning of these words & phrases, because the original Greek is much more expressive. And although I don’t know Greek, there is a lot to be learned with an Amplified Bible and a few translations that expound on words and phrases like “fear and trembling”.
The Amplified expounds:”Therefore, my dear ones, as you have always obeyed [my suggestions], so now, not only [with the enthusiasm you would show] in my presence but much more because I am absent, work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, [a]with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ)."
Fear in this case is also reverence. And work can be translated into the broader terms of “cultivate, carry out, and fully complete.
After all, Hebrews 4:16 says: “ Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace (the throne of God’s unmerited favor to us sinners), that we may receive mercy [for our failures] and find grace to help in good time for every need [appropriate help and well-timed help, coming just when we need it].”
This boldness comes from our unshaken faith that Grace (a freely offered gift that we do not deserve by our own merits) will make us right before God.
I’ve come to believe there is a fine line that each of us has to learn in our walk. Yes, we should take heed from Romans 6:1-2 “ What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”
But if we are constantly in doubt of our salvation, and do not see it as a Gift from God, then satan can accuse us by saying that “we’ll never be good enough”. And once that happens, it compromises our ability to “fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near the throne”. I believe this is one of the devil's oldest tricks.
But we’re all human and it can take time to find this balance.
"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." 1 John 3:2
"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." 1 Cor. 13:12
This means when we see Christ face to face, then we shall be just like him.
Until that day, we are being changed from glory to glory into the image of Christ.
"And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." 2 Cor. 3:18
Sadly, this mistaken idea of attaining perfection in this life comes from versions which translate the Greek word "telios" as perfection, rather than goal or maturity.
The goal of our Christian walk it to become "mature" by following Christ. Perfection is not till we see Christ face to face, when he returns.
I'm looking forward to that day!